A simple explanation of the Meta Business Suite

Most people find this really confusing to work with and navigate so here is a quick guide to the Meta ecosystem from an advertising point of view.

Quick Overview

What is the Meta Business Suite? It’s essentially Meta’s set of tools that you use to run ads or promote your business on Facebook and Instagram.

The full Meta business tools menu, grouped into business products, engaging an audience, analysis and reporting, advertising and management

It includes tools like:

Ads Manager
Creative Hub (for pre-building ads)
Events Manager (for managing pixels/datasets)
etc

There are dozens of tools in the suite, and they each change all the time, including what they’re called.

But it is just one part of the overall ecosystem, which includes a few key parts:Here’s what each of them are:

How a Business Portfolio holds your assets, grants access to users, and connects to the Meta Business Suite tools

Users which are the individual Facebook personal user accounts. You, me, whoever. They are required to use the Meta Business Suite.

Note: do not create a fake or catchall brand account and share. one this leads to constant battles over 2FA and logging in, but also can get the account banned or flagged (link).

Assets are your Facebook pages, Instagram profiles, advertising datasets (aka pixels), catalogues and other data sources etc.

All assets are created by individuals before they’re added to a Business Portfolio, which is…

Business Portfolio, which is like a business account on Facebook. It’s an entity that can own and control your business assets, rather than an individual.

Once you have a Business Portfolio set up correctly, you can grant access to multiple people including employees, contractors, other admins, with different levels of control.

Partners are other Business Portfolios, usually agencies, that you can share access to your Business Portfolio as if you were sharing access to another person.

Because they are their own Business Portfolio, they can grant access of different levels to your assets to their team members without you adding and removing them individually.

Tools. These are things like the Ads Manager, Events Manager, Scheduler, etc that help you use or manage the assets in your Business Portfolio.

You can grant individual users access to different levels of control of these tools based on their permissions on an asset level.

How to navigate to your Business Portfolio

So, usually you will want to control the settings of your business portfolio, or get to an individual tool / asset.

To navigate to your portfolio for the first time, go to here https://business.facebook.com/ and click the menu in the top left corner. Then click your portfolio.

The portfolio switcher in Meta Business Suite, with the gear icon that opens the portfolio's own settings

If you’re already using a tool of the Meta Business Suite already, you can always click the same menu in the top left, and then the gear icon to navigate back to your portfolio to edit its settings (like adding a new asset such as a page, profile or pixel.

FAQ

Q. Can I create a Facebook Ads account without a Facebook account?

A. Sadly, no. Everyone needs a personal Facebook user account to use the Meta Business Suite.

Q. How to get Setup on Meta Business Suite?

A. You need to create your business assets first with your personal profiles, then create Business Portfolio, then add your assets to it.

Worth reading next, since most of it happens in here: why ad accounts get banned and how to avoid it.

Want help with Facebook lead gen ads? Two ways I can help:

Try my DIY course. I made this for friends who asked for a speedrun on DIY lead ads. It is how I do what I do, condensed into a playbook.
Get me to run your ads for you. If you want done-for-you help, that is what I do, specifically for sales-led and education businesses. You can also book a free 15 minute call and I will look at your account beforehand.